Seduce me, DC

By the time I was 36 had visited all but eight American states—yet I had never been to Washington, DC.

The truth is that this town held all of the romance for me of a stack of manila folders. The good things DC seemed to evoke for everyone else—glistening monuments, free museums, the aura of power—were swamped in my imagination by images of an army of ambitious bureaucrats swarming the K Street hive.

It is not that I avoided Washington. I simply wasn’t particularly attracted to it. Like a lot of company towns, DC promised the kind of single-minded dullness that makes talking about cars in Detroit and Mickey Mouse in Orlando unbearable after a year or two. It promised the drone of politics. I think Las Vegas is less obsessed about gambling than DC is about politics.

For me there are two types of romantic places. The first form of romantic spot are places of such pressing beauty that all human activity pales in comparison. The second are places where humanity presses together in a way that is unpredictable and stimulating—places of infectious energy where even the cabbies and the waiters have a story and everyone aspires to their own form of art. Washington doesn’t necessarily seem to fit into either mold.

By a strange quirk of fate, I now find myself in DC. The short version of how I got here: my wife was offered a shiny new job and I was stuck in a dreadful one. The decision was actually pretty easy.

I have been here long enough to see signs of life beneath the swirl of political gossip. But is it a city of art? Is it a city of literature? Are art and literature produced here, or are they merely curated in well polished marble monuments to art? I can think of no better way of spending my time in my new hometown than answering the question. With the possible exception of getting a job so I can stop living parasitically off my wife.

Washington, I never thought I’d fall for your transparent shtick, but here I am—suddenly locked in your embrace and ready to be beguiled.